ALL for One. Please read this story about a boat mom recently diagnosed with 3B Lung Cancer and decide for yourself if you can lend a hand.
From Steff’s Husband Max:

“I’ll get straight to it because there is no way to cushion this blow. Some of you may have heard. Steff Hegewald, mom of two girls, wife of Max, daughter, sister, friend, nurse, co-captain of SV Xpression, and occasional SSB net controller, has stage 3B lung cancer. She is a young otherwise healthy nonsmoker, which makes this all more shocking”.

This fundraiser has two main goals: (1) help fulfill Steff’s wish to bring their ONLY home – their sailboat Xpression – from La Paz, Mexico to WA (by ship or truck), where Steff is being treated and (2) give them a financial cushion to help Steff, Max, Michelle and Autumn focus on her health and minimize worries about finances. PLEASE join us on this mission by donating and sharing to your own networks. 

As background for some and as many of you know, Steff is the family breadwinner who has worked as a travel nurse to refill the family cruising kitty. As a result of her health, she is unable to continue working. Steff and Max first cruised Mexico many years ago and were married in the Sea of Cortez. For their current journey, their family left WA in 2018 with plans to sail in Mexico and to the South Pacific in 2020. Covid scuttled those South Pacific plans, but we were lucky to have been with them in Mexico during that crazy time. She is now back in WA, and Max and the girls are en route to there from La Paz.Please share this fundraiser. Any amount will help as they make major decisions. I know how important Steff and Max are to the cruising community in Mexico. Let’s show them how much we care. Any amount – no matter the size – will help support them through this time.

Thank you for caring.


We thought through this story and put it out only after making sure we would not violate any family privacy.  But we have a link to these family cruisers as we first met them prior to Covid in early 2020 in La Cruz as they were prepping to sail to the South Pacific (which got messed up) and then we met up with them multiple times in the Baja last summer.  Like us, they have two daughters living on the boat and it’s their permanent home. The Tulum Crew has this family in our thoughts and prayers-
To Steff and the rest of our friends who have or have had Cancer: 
Kick Some Cancer Ass!

(Thanks to Pexels for the photos used in this story)

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